Though Vince Ebert makes his living as a prominent cabaret artist in Germany, he is in fact a trained physicist who has a good understanding of science and is thus quite able to see it when someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

One example is Germany’s “Energiewende” (transition to renewable energies) where Germany is attempting to wean itself off fossil fuels and to supply its energy needs almost completely with green energies such as wind and sun.

One aim Germany has is to convert all its motor vehicles on the street over the electric vehicles. In fact some green politicians have even called for banning the registration of fossil fuel cars by 2030.

So just how feasible (or absurd) is the proposal? Ebert points out in an opinion piece here, that is a lot easier said than done. Clearly the whole idea is in fact quite absurd.

First he notes that electric cars are a long way from having the over 700+ kilometer range of fossil fuel cars and that electric cars reaching that range are “dreams of the future“.

Quarter million wind turbines

Another major obstacle is the lack of charging stations. Even if Germany managed to put merely 1 million electric cars on its streets, Ebert calculates that this would necessitate the construction of 35,000 wind turbines.

However in Germany there are in fact some 6o million vehicles on the road, and “if every driver charged his car for 30 minutes every second day” and did so evenly distributed over a smart grid, “we would need 140 new power plants or 220,000 wind turbines“…which is almost 10 times more than what is already installed.

This is an enormous number — and it would only be enough for the electric cars and not even include the tens of millions of households, businesses and industry that together need even more power than Germany’s transportation sector.

Worse than fossil fuels

Another problem, Ebert points out, is the enormous size of the batteries. In order to replace the 30 liters of petrol of a conventional car, an electric vehicle needs a modern lithium battery weighing some 900 kilograms. Supplying the hundreds of millions of cars in operation worldwide with the lithium and neodymium would be nowhere near sustainable, Ebert writes. He also cites findings by Germany’s renowned Fraunhofer Institute:

Moreover the Fraunhofer-Institute for Structural Physics concluded that the manufacture and recycling of modern batteries has a negative impact on the ecological budget when compared to the fossil fuel engines.”

In a nutshell, electric cars would only make the environment much worse.

Then there are the organizational aspects of using electric car batteries, Ebert reminds us, asking readers to imagine millions of Germans all leaving at once for summer holidays on the autobahns and then all of them trying to charge their vehicles all at once along the motorway after a just couple of hours of driving. Huge traffic jams would form as cars charge up at stations at the rest areas. While a fossil fuel car can fill up in a matter of minutes, electric cars would be blocking the charging stations for an hour or more. It would be total chaos and mayhem.

Ebert summarizes his opinion on the rush to electric cars by quoting biologist Thomas Huxley:

The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

this article is a prime example of how a even a physicist can get it wrong and how it becomes “Fake News” when interpreted by someone with a clear anti-electric-cars- and anti-renewables-bias.

Point by point:
* Banning the registration of fossil fuel cars is a reasonable thing to do. It sends a clear signal to the industry to shift focus and therefor the industry doesn’t have to “wait and see” what percentage of bought cars will be fossil fuel driven and what percentage will be electric. You can argue about the date however. 2030 might be a bit too early, but it is expected that by 2025 the total cost of ownership for new electric cars will be below that of new Diesel fuel cars. So maybe we are looking at 2035 or 2040 at the latest for such a ban. Mind you: there will always be exceptions and this will likely only be the case for private car registrations first.

* 700+ km range is desirable, but unneccessary. You’d be driving around dead weight most of the time. Electric cars are different from fossil fuel cars in that you always start with a full tank/battery. It’s inconvenient to drive to a gas station even if the actual refill only takes about 5 minutes. With driving and paying it easily adds up to 10-15 minutes. The sweet spot for electric range will definetly be lower than the current ranges of fossil fuel cars.

* His calculation of the needed power is just wrong. There are 45 million cars on the road (the rest of his 60 million figure must be trucks and/or work vehicles?) driving an average of 15000 km a year. If the consume 20 kWh per 100 km that equals 3000 kWh a year per car or 135 TWh a year for the whole fleet. That is roughly 15 GW of continuous power if all car recharges could be spread out equally over the day. Hydro, biomass, wind and solar produced 26.7 GW on average in 2016. But even if all cars were electric tomorrow we could easily charge them since the power plants we have are rarely producing eletricity at 100%. Charging them between 9 pm and 6 am should be no problem at all with current capacity. And as a quick reminder: German electricity usage increased by 70 TWh from the early 90s and that increase was no problem, wasn’t it?

* Lithium supply and neodymium: a car battery contains very little Lithium compared to its mass, in fact a Tesla S battery back contains around the same amount of Lithium as there is Lead in an average starter battery. And Lihtium is more abundant than Lead … Neodymium and other Rare Earth metals aren’t used in batteries or the motors (at least not in Lithium batteries and asynchonous electric motors).

* Electric cars don’t make the enviroment worse. How would that even work?

And finally:

imagine millions of Germans all leaving at once for summer holidays on the autobahns and then all of them trying to charge their vehicles all at once along the motorway after a just couple of hours of driving. Huge traffic jams would form as cars charge up at stations at the rest areas. While a fossil fuel car can fill up in a matter of minutes, electric cars would be blocking the charging stations for an hour or more. It would be total chaos and mayhem.

Really? Let’s do the calculation then. A gas station with 20 gas pumps will service 2880 cars in 12 hours if at peak load and every fill up just takes 5 minutes. So you need roughly 700 of those gas stations to service 2 million cars at “peak summerholidays on the autobahn”?

Anyway, let’s image an all electric future “gas station” then: car charges will charge at 100-350 kW, so we take an average of 200 kW for a near empty battery and charge it for 20 minutes, resulting in another 300 km of range. To serve 2880 cars in 12 hours this station needs to have at least 80 parking/charging spots. Since the car’s range only increases by 300 km instead of 700 km (fossile fuel tank) and some spares are always ok the electric “gas station” needs 200 charging spots (40 MW total). That’s easily achievable at the “Raststätten” at the autobahn. Wouldn’t you say?

And that amount of capacity is only needed for long distance travel since those electric cars will always start with a full battery. So regular gas stations don’t need to expand their 4-6 gas pumps to 32-48 charging spots.

“…and charge it for 20 minutes, resulting in another 300 km of range…”
Already you’re starting with quite unrealistic figures.
And why not just suppose that all Germans live only in the flat parts of Germany, travel less than 200 km to their holiday destination, and do so only with a tail wind, and bring no luggage with them.

We are talking about the “all cars are electric” future, aren’t we? Chargers with 350 kW are already announced and chargers with 120 kW are already in use. It’s not unreasonable to assume a fast charger would charge with an average of 200 kW in that future. That’s 67 kWh in 20 minutes or 300 km at 22 kWh per 100 km.

Or to say it with the person you are citing: 1 million future cars charge with 350 kW in the evening and that’s why we need 35000 wind turbines to cover this … if my figures were unrealistic then what are Mr. Eberts figures? Unrealisticer?

Oh come on! From your article: “Ebert calculates that this would necessitate the construction of 35,000 wind turbines.”

That’s taken directly from a paragraph that assumes 350 kW chargers will be in place when 1 million cars charge at once needing 35000 wind turbines (at lousy 1 MW each while the average in 2016 was almost 3 MW for newly installed wind turbines).

Do you not believe in your own numbers? I just reduced them to a more conservative 200 kW.

“traditional” power plants are already there and the guy from the article claimed they would not be able to handle the increase in power usage from using electric cars. That’s a false statement.

Electric cars charge when parked. If you park long enough (which is the case for nearly all cars) you’ll start with full batteries every time. Of course every parking spot needs a charger then … but over half of the cars already are parked in garages or other privately owned parking spots and it is not too far fetched that in a 100% electric car world nearly every public parking spot where cars park for longer than an hour would have chargers too.

Imposing ideals? Rules are sometimes neccessary to achieve goals, don’t you agree? Like “don’t use asbestos in new buildings” or “don’t kill other people”. Freedom ends where it diminishes the freedom of other individuals. I don’t like breathing car exhaust … do you?

You appear to harbour quite a disdain for CO2, yet I am sure you like to eat, say bread for an example.

Do you know, at current atmospheric CO2 levels, a field of wheat has consumed all the CO2 available to it by about midday and stops growing, unless wind blows bringing along fresh CO2.

Also, in my lifetime the worlds population has doubled, requiring roughly a doubling of the food production.
That food production has more than kept pace with this demand is in no small way linked to the increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, which has enabled significant increases in plant growth rates.
Also, with higher CO2 levels plants generally require less water to grow and are more drought tolerant.

“And yes, CO2 isn’t a bad molecule per se. Water is essential for life….”

This is getting too ridiculous mere rubbish scientific opinionating. The limit has been reached.

Please note, seb, this forum is not one where you can just walk in and act like it’s your own to spew whatever nonsense that happens to flicker to mind. From now on this site will stop being a platform for those who cannot successfully start one on their own.

“Haven’t you seen those reports about people driving thousands of kilometers with a tesla in one day?”

Nope. Are you hallucinating?
BTW. A kWh through a Li Ion battery costs a Euro, if one takes the battery lifetime into account. So if they drive say… 7000 kms in one day… (you said “thousands”)…. that’s 1400 Euros they spend in one day. The Green Utopia comes with a hefty price tag.
I did generously assume the consumption of a 100 km/h electric noddycar… Probably it’s at least twice that with a wasteful ultraheavy Tesla.

“BTW. A kWh through a Li Ion battery costs a Euro, if one takes the battery lifetime into account. So if they drive say… 7000 kms in one day… (you said “thousands”)…. that’s 1400 Euros they spend in one day”

The cost of a kWh put through a battery is determined by battery cost and number of cycles during the usage of the battery. More usage equals a smaller price per kWh through the battery.

If you bought an electric car and only used it once, then the kWh price will be very high. If you manage to drive the battery empty every single day for 10 years you’ll arrive at a very low price.

Current battery price is around 250 € per kWh and you can easily get 3000 cycles out of them if not 5000. That’s 0.83 € or 0,05 € per kWh through the battery. The manufacturers estimate that 100 € can be reached in the next 10 years.

Ehm … ok. So it is possible to critize a technology without using it, but praising its pros or checking the statements of those critics is not possible if you don’t own it yet?

I would be perfectly fine with an EV, but I can’t charge it where I park and therefor I have to wait until that’s possible or other places where I park my car have chargers installed. That’s not a problem for the majority of drivers right now. The problem is the total cost of ownership for such a car if you buy it now. It’s not economical, but so is buying a Porsche or other luxury cars.

There is a market for that and there is a market for expensive EVs. And the later one is growing as prices come down … and they obviously are in the next decade.

sod 22. March 2017 at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Reply
“Pierre, how often have you been driving 700 km this week?”

The typical rethorical bullshit.
a) When a car is used for 10,000 km a year, the Greens will say, see, you don’t need a car, it’s idle 99% of the time
b) When someone actually uses his car for lengthy travels like all weekly commuters across Germany do to get to their job the Greens just deny that any of these people exist. The Greens will also immediately demand that these people switch to the train; which works only in lucky cases without grave losses in time.

The command economy of the Greens (and the CDU, which is another Green party) will outlaw or make impossible anything that the Greens will not like. That’s how they got their name of Verbotspartei. (prohibition party).

The current CDU energy communism (forcing us to hand over 32 bn EUR a year to the owners of renewables contraptions) is of course part of this anticapitalist, anti-freedom, anti property rights dictatorship.

Ok, lets say you are a commuter and have to drive 100 km to your work and 100 km back … that would be the rare exception of a commuter, do you agree? With a capable electric car (nobody expects the final electric fleet to be those early 100 km range cars) you can drive that on every workday of the year only charging at home. That’s ~220 days times 200 km = 44000 km per year.

What currently is not easily done with an electric car is weekend commute over very long distances (say you live in Hamburg and work in Munich). If a car is the best solution to this problem is another question entirely, but is the number of people doing something like that really that big? We could easily have exception for them. However it’s beyong stupid to take this as an example why electric cars can’t work.

So you wait … it’s not like you have to stand next to your car all night to wait for it to fully charge. We are talking about commuters who sit at least 2 hours in their car … every single day and that’s easily doable with (some of) todays electric cars.

Well, the best thing about electric cars is……err, well the good thing about electric cars is…………………err, well, look at it this way, if we all had electric cars, we would save…some fossil fuel…. wouldn’t we.

That is “carbon based fuel” and it would be diverted to other useful products, such as fertiliser, synthetic fiber, synthetic rubber, nylon, plastics, pesti­cides and insecticides, perfumes, dyes, paints, carbon black ….
Actual products include:http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm

The average is 15000 km per year or around 40 km per day. You can easily charge that up every night. Those who regularly drive more can invest in different solutions that will let you charge with 20+ kW.

Hi from Oz. So, if I had an E-Golf, and drove it for 390 km (3 x 130 km per 7 hour charge) per week, it would increase my current electricity usage from about 84 kWH per week to 156 kWH, or about an 85% increase. My current car would use a tank of regular petrol to go the same distance, for about A$70. And petrol stations are easy to find. I’ll stick with petrol, thanks.

You are a funny guy, really. Full of contradictions … why can you critize EVs and be the one “yapping” about how bad EVs are without using one? Is that even possible? Because I just learned that you can’t check/examine statements made by critics or even tell how good they are or will be without using one.

Would you also think that non climate scientists can’t debate over climate change or anything to do with climate? Hmm … so it’s only “yapping” coming from you when talking about climate change, isn’t it? 😉

“How do people living in flats charge their EVs?”.
Well – Mostly they can´t.
And that is the not yet outspoken idea (policy) of our upcomming future.
We have not been properly informed just yet.
So – forget the individually owned EV, forget the private air-travel and while we are at it – forget beef-steaks too.